President's Message

december 2020

#MACCS2020

Dear Maryland ACC Colleagues,

I hope that everyone had a Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving last week. The 2020 Mid-Atlantic Capital Cardiology Symposium (MACCS), our annual regional ACC meeting held in collaboration with the Virginia, Delaware, and DC Chapters, was held November 21-22 in its first ever virtual format. Its success exceeded our expectations, with over 174 registrants, including attendees from 8 states outside our region and 3 nations. During the meeting itself, we had 74 social media participants, over 370 tweets, and >1 million digital impressions! A special thanks to FIT Wendy Ying (MD) and our other social media moderators and influencers for getting the word out.

The Saturday FIT Forum, organized and led by Shashank Sinha (VA) and Sammy Zakaria (MD) attracted over 40 FITs and featured MDACC speakers Catherine Bennet (MDACC WIC Chair), Kerunne Ketslogetswe, Dipan Desai, Stanley Liu, and Garima Sharma. The Forum was keynoted by Dr. Katie Berlacher of the University of Pittsburgh, and covered important non-clinical topics concerning the practice of cardiology, including Strategizing Your Job Search, the Art of Negotiation, Perspectives from Practice, RVUs/Physician Payment, Personal Finance, and Work-Life Integration. Our FITs greatly value this practical information from experienced cardiologists. I think I speak for many older cardiologists in saying that I wish I had known this stuff when I was starting out! The full agenda for the 2020 FIT Forum can be found here – recorded content will be added to the site in the coming days.

The Sunday MACCS Conference itself was themed around Diversity, Inclusion, and Women’s Cardiovascular Health, was organized and led by Andrew Choi (DC) and Victor Soukoulis (VA) and was funded in part by an ACC Chapter-Section grant co-authored by MDACC President-elect Garima Sharma. This ambitious project had also intended to bring female and minority pre-med high school and college students to Heart House to learn more about the field of cardiovascular medicine – this component will have to await our return to live conferences in 2021.

Our keynote speaker for MACCS was Dr. Quinn Capers of Ohio State, a renowned authority on the topic of Implicit Bias in medicine and its potential effect on medical school admissions and disparities in care. I have had the privilege of hearing Dr. Capers speak on this important subject at an ACC Board of Trustees meeting and I encourage everyone to learn more about it. You can find a prerecorded version of Dr. Capers’ talk here. The day also featured outstanding lectures on Cardio-Obstetrics, Post-Partum Hypertension, Menopause and CV Health, PFO Closure, Pulmonary Hypertension, and Cardiac Amyloidosis. Additional MDACC speakers included Erin Michos and Rani Hasan. You can find the full 2020 MACCS agenda here – recorded content will also be added in the days ahead.

The FIT Young Investigators Award competition (pre-recorded) was won by Dr. Todd Teigeler of Virginia Commonwealth University for his research “Intermediate Term Performance and Safety of His Bundle Pacing Leads.” The other YIA finalists were: Binaya Patel (DC), Anum Minhas (MD), Toral Patel (VA), and Shaneke Weerakoon (DC). There were 32 additional FIT abstracts accepted – you can see their beautiful electronic posters here. Top Poster honors were awarded to: Imran Aslam (MD), Dinesh Kadariya (VA), Chau Vo (VA), Eunice Yang (MD), and Charan Yerasi (DC). MDACC CV Team members Rama Anthony and Nailya Muganlinskaya contributed interesting case presentations which you can see here. Congratulations to all our FIT and CV Team presenters and award winners!

The Maryland Chapter Award this year was given to all our MDACC members, for your resilience and professionalism in the face of the extraordinary challenges of the pandemic. Many of you, particularly our FITs, CV Team, and critical care specialists, have been serving on the front lines taking care of sick Covid patients. Others have had to work outside of their practice environment filling in for others. You have had to absorb financial losses and make hard choices to keep your practices functioning. Through it all, you have collectively maintained and enhanced our professionalism and advanced the practice of cardiovascular medicine while serving our patients. In this season of thanksgiving, we are thankful for the dedication of all of you, our ACC members.

MACCS 2021 planning will start soon. We hope to be back at Heart House in person again next year but will definitely take lessons learned from the virtual meeting to blend the best of both formats. As always, please send MDACC leadership and staff your comments, questions, ideas, and suggestions to president@marylandacc.org.

Joseph E. Marine, MD, FACC